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Why Document Management System Is Essential In Every Business

Written by Claudia Jeff on November 06, 2020

There would have been times when businesses used to thrive off of sheer luck and hard work to provide. Now for a business to thrive, it requires constant and consistent effort. From making your place in the market to maintaining it there, it requires a lot more than just luck for a business to grow successfully.

Data and information are the bloodlines of a business. Knowing every detail about your consumer and keeping a recorded data set of it is what keeps the company moving forward with relevant information to help the business owners through. It is why most of the businesses have the capacity to produce a staggering amount of data daily. But just data production is not the key. The more data is generated, the more efficient document management software solution it requires.

What is a Document Management System?

To put it simply, a document management system is an automated way to organize, capture, and securely digitize documents and tasks for tagging and approval of a completed task at hand. The electronic document management system works through your business files to store data on a cloud DMS.

Why is documentation important in an organization?

According to recent statistics about cloud filing and document management systems, as of 2020, there has been an overall 86% savings for documentation. Now, these figures clearly suggest that why digital documentation is essential for an organization. Not only does it free the upfront cost, time, and effort, but once the mindsets of professionals change as to not considering paperwork a part of their jobs, the whole trajectory of conducting business operations would become more efficient.

What is the purpose of a document management system?

The primary purpose of a document management system is efficiency. What many businesses don’t realize is that the hard work they consider as a part of an employee’s job is actually a waste of time. Your skills-based hiring can be better utilized to strategize your business moves than to sit around and do paperwork. The painstaking process of faxing, searching, filing, and manually handling particular documents can all come under one efficient document management software. It will not only be automating workflow and all your processes, but it would be much more than just cloud storage.

An advanced document management solutions can handle a large number of paper files in-flow and out-flow of your business. You can spend that valuable time doing what actually is your job requirement that is skill-based and is not the administrative tasks that you so diligently undertake as a part of your job.

What are the benefits of a document management system?

Managing data and information is a challenging task. Thus, documents being one of the essential components of any enterprise cannot be left on their own and need to be looked after and managed consistently. Depending on what is the nature of your business, DMS products can provide a good number of benefits. Here are the top few of the main benefits of document management that you can expect to fulfil your requirements.

1.     Reduction in Storage Space

The more paper documentation your company requires, the more storing capacity do you need to store it. The expense to store paper documents is an extra one if you consider it, but it can just as easily be eradicated. A software-based digital solution for managing your documents is all you need instead of a file cabinet, storage space, boxes, or trash bins to discard any irrelevant piece of information. It will automatically free up office space for better and more productive activities. Although if there are documents that do require a bulk storage in a hard copies format, then it can easily be stored off-site in a warehouse space without compromising your site storage capacity.

2.     Better Security

Many companies store sensitive information through their paperwork and documentation. It is why a document management system provides you with a better security regulation that saves you the risk and threat of losing relevant and vital information. Not only does it offer easy remote access to multiple locations, but you can regulate the user domains that are allowed to edit the document and control it’s sharing. Also, an added feature of a DMS solution is that it leaves behind audit trails. So if you wanted to know who viewed, edited, or accessed a document for modification, you would know, and it would be traceable back to the user.          

3.     Improved Regulatory Compliance

Many times it so happens that a document is not one time. It either has to be annually regulated like an operating license or can lead to permission being taken away, charge fines and revoke business opportunities. It is why, due to such regulatory compliance necessary to be made, individual documents cannot be simply kept away and forgotten. What a document management solutions does in this regard is to keep the regulatory record safe within the system and remind you accordingly to have it updated by the date its due. The schedules can be easily automated and customized to fulfill these requirements.

4.     Easier Retrieval of Documents

Imagine having to look for a document file in a huge document storage room with stacks and piles of many files all lined up, and you have that vital piece of information in that file that you have to show in the meeting happening in the next hour. It sounds stressful, right? Then it is confusing to find that businesses still prefer to go through the longer route of intense labour workout of a diligent employee to retrieve important files when it can happen instantly on a click of a button. A document management system will take your random keyword search program and present it to you the file that you have been looking for.

5.     Better Collaboration among the Team

Not only a document management software would store your documents, but it will allow you to instantly access, edit options, and provide overall better collaborative features for your workforce and team. All of the team members can access documents on the platform during a meeting to know exactly what is being talked about and have a better understanding of things by being on the same page. Not only will this put all the team members on an equal level of information sharing but an excellent management solution ridding you from making a bunch of copies of a piece of document and distributing it across the board.

6.     Enhanced Backup and Disaster Recovery

Imagine losing all your important files and documents in an in-house fire at your workplace. Such a situation is authentic because disasters are uncanny to happen. From an earthquake causing the roof to crash to the monsoon season causing floods and drowning your complete paperwork, no insurance covers up the loss than having a reliable backup that gives you copies of the same documents. It is why document management systems allow you an enhanced backup solution and a disaster recovery program for all your important files and documents.

7.     Intangible Benefits

In addition to all the accountable benefits mentioned above, there are a few intangible benefits that make a DMS a valuable and integral part of your business conduction process no matter what type it is. From being academic writing services to an eCommerce store, a god DMS would make all businesses better regulated.  Following are the top five reasons for knowledge management:

• Flexibility
• Competitiveness
• Peace of mind
• Freedom
• Professional growth

What are the features of a document management system?

An efficient document management system seeks to provide the benefits mentioned above through the following document management features:

1.     Identifying repositories for all types of documents

Where the paper documents would be stored in filing cabinets across the workspace in a dedicated storeroom or specific department, an electronic document can easily be stored in a local desktop computer of each user, human resource and employee. It will be connecting them through a centralized server to a dedicated document repository. A good DMS would be expected to indicate where a document is stored, could be accessed from, and even produce the document on command.

2.     Creates a classified system for documents

No more manually sorting through files or keeping them in different departments according to their relevance. Now a DMS will do the sorting for you and help you categorize your documents to the tiniest most details that make it different from another. You can easily create a hierarchal system that facilitates browsing for a specific document and help in more efficient document retrieval through a search engine program, right on time.

3.     Rules and templates for better creation and originality

You can use different templates and create an original document within the software platform. You can then go through the document management process to set a controlled rule as to who can view it, access it, and edit it accordingly. Such a feature would help you keep your document safe and original away from leaking and unauthorized access. You can easily control as well as track the document getting under prying observation that may want to abuse it.

4.     Tools to specify a document to suit business processes

A document management system would have to alert and scheduling tools that would bring forth the specific documents that require approval, regulation, or any other prerequisite decision to be made. In addition to this, a DMS would alert all or specifically the concerned person for getting back to the document and would not share unnecessary details with all the viewers. It will even work as a centralized server unit to send out important announcements and alerts that concern everyone.

5.     Specific policies and procedures for archiving

This feature promotes conducting business in a controlled environment. A document management system would have strict policies and procedures set by the controller, higher management and administration as to how to deal with older document creation that might not be currently important are a part of relevant data collection for business. The documents would get archived and have controlled access or might even be permanently destroyed without any back record if they are no longer useful.

6.     Facilities for quick retrieval

The reason to implement document management software is mainly to save time and enhance productivity, which is initially the core objective of any effective document management system. Any facility or feature that could make the retrieval process easier and more efficient is how you can differentiate between the many different types of DMS software. The best one would have the search engine and keyword policy for command retrieval at any time of the day.

7.     Enhanced security procedures to prevent unauthorized access

Other than all the features that do add up to control the business process and provide a secure, trackable environment, there are enhanced security procedures and features that ensure and allow you to practice a regulated business. It allows you to have audit trails that can be traced back to the last user and tell you precisely as to which user accessed which file and for what in case of any data breaches.

In Conclusion;

All in all, a document management system is valuable to save effort, time and money resources. Not only is it valuable for cutting the operational costs, but it gives you better employee engagement and customer relationships as well as a paperless office. Many businesses and global enterprises have already well established and undertaken an efficient DMS program. It is high-time local businesses, and small private startups embrace the custom benefits DMS can provide and see their business grow in no time.

Author Bio: Claudia Jeffrey is currently working as a Digital Analyst at MHR writer and trainer at Assignment Assistance; an excellent platform to buy coursework. She is an experienced professional when it comes to management software. Having worked for a significant amount of time with bigger corporations, she has gained expertise that she shares on her blog with a respectable audience.